The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Edited by Charlotte Mason.

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."
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Education and the Education Act, 1902

by Edith EscombeVolume 14, 1903, pgs. 664-669

["The Act abolished the 2568 school boards set up by the Education Act 1870 and handed their duties over to Local Education Authorities (LEAs). It also brought voluntary schools under some control of the government, giving them funding." Read more about the Education Act 1902 here]

To those interested in education, the first impression produced on
reading through the New Education Act is one of disappointment. So much
space is allotted to the management and working of the Act,
whereas—apart from the controversial religious instruction—such slight
reference is made to teaching per se; whilst in Part III., relating
exclusively to elementary education, the word "children" is only once
mentioned.

It seems such a mighty mill of organization for grinding knowledge into
pot-hooks and vulgar fractions; and the reader may, perhaps, be
forgiven should he wonder if the dame school and dunce's cap of the
past were not simpler methods for obtaining the same results. But an
Act of IV. Parts and 27 Sections cannot be laid aside with a mere
cursory glance. These pages represent the hard work of several weeks
before the House—endless debates, heated controversies—not to mention
the labour entailed in drafting the Bill itself. With this year the
working of the same Act is placed in the hands of the elected men and
women of every town and village throughout the length and breadth of
England, who thus become the operatives of this mighty mill; and with
them rest the success or failure of the scheme, for in their keeping
lies the Education of the Act.

Part II., Section 2 (1) opens with the words: "The local education
authority shall consider the educational needs of their area," and in
these words lie, or should lie, the educational force and power of the
Act.

Hitherto the child of the Essex agricultural labourer has been
following the same course of instruction as the child of the Birmingham
mechanic or artisan; the boy destined for the colliery or the girl
intended for domestic service have followed—however distantly—the same
curriculum as the sons and daughters of the smaller tradesmen or the
teacher's own children. On the face of it, the conditions are bound to
result—as they have done—in failure. In towns, the results have been
somewhat more favourable; it is in agricultural districts that the
effects have been so disastrous. In urban districts, the elementary
education has in many instances been supplemented by secondary and
technical schools; whereas in rural districts girls and boys have, at
the age of 13 or 14, been returned to their homes unfitted for the work
they are required to perform, and have in consequence "flocked to the
towns," to compete with the children of cities in the terrible struggle
for work and position, whilst sharing with them in the garish pleasures
of the towns, having, as farmers tell, "no love of the land or of the
animals."

"The local education authority shall consider the educational needs of
their area": if only for this phrase, let the new Education Act be
greeted with a cheer!

Passing to Part III., Section 5, it is stated that "the local education
authority" shall "be responsible for, and have the control of all
secular instruction in public elementary schools," so that from the
very entry of the child upon its school career, the education can—and
should—be directed according to the needs of each respective locality.
With these two clauses, applying as they do to both elementary and
higher education, there is given an opportunity for adapting
instruction—and the mode of instruction—to the needs of those it is
hoped to benefit individually, not losing sight of national efficiency
as the underlying fundamental principle.

Past history has been written for our learning, and it is for each
local education authority to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the
facts to be learnt therefrom. Satisfactory education is the instruction
which trains a child to fill, in after life, those positions for which
by circumstance he is naturally destined. To study the educational
history of the past thirty years, and to contemplate the present state
of national and individual inefficiency, is sufficient confirmation of
the highly unsatisfactory condition of our national education. Those
who are in favour of the present system will quote instances of
scholars who have risen from the Board School to be "teachers at
Oxford," wranglers, and what not; but these examples are the exception,
and of the ultimate career of the scholars, nothing further is heard.
Whereas, on the other hand is heard from all sides the wail of
inefficiency; no servants, no skilled hands, and worst of all, no
agricultural labourers. The lack of domestic servants can, to a great
extent, be met by ladies doing the work themselves, and learning
skilled trades, such as bookbinding, dress-making, basket-work, fine
needle-work, etc., or taking up such occupations as dairy-work,
gardening, fruit-growing; but, so far as the labour question is
concerned, matters are less hopeful. In many counties the country
districts are becoming depopulated. The children of agricultural
labourers leave school with no applicable knowledge, incapable of and
with no taste for farm-work, and drift into the towns, leaving the
least intelligent and least capable to inadequately carry on the
ever-decreasing work. Lord Londonberry, President of the Board of
Education, addressing a conference of the Chief Inspectors of
Elementary Schools, dwelt upon the above question; "I am," he said, "an
ardent advocate of the practical education of children in the wants and
requirements of their future, by which I mean that I think the
surroundings and natural interests of these children should be
considered, and their liberty under our regulations taken advantage of
by the teachers in their respective districts." The late Archbishop of
Canterbury, referring to the same question, said: "The use of machinery
has been growing on the farms of England for many years, and yet how
many boys in our national schools know the construction of a
reaping-machine or a threshing-machine? A knowledge of this would be
deeply interesting, both to the children and to the parents of the
children, and to win their interest is of the highest value. A boy who
has been trained to use his brains on the understanding of the science
which is, as it were, in constant operation around him, is sure to find
new calls in the course of his life for using his brains in the same
way. The material we already possess for a good system of education is
very good, but it requires very careful handling."

Mr. Balfour, speaking at the Mansion House on commercial education,
said: "It is strange that we, who are thus concerned with this
universal commerce, should be a nation that has lagged behind all the
great nations in the world, not merely in commercial education, which
is a portion of technical education, but also in many of the wider and
more important aspects of national education." The same speaker, in his
speech before the House of Commons, March 20th, 1902, said: "It will be
for each district to determine what is the species of education most
needed by the children of the district to fit them for their future
work; a subject which no central department can so well judge of as
those whom the parents of the children elect, and who are well
acquainted with all the circumstances in which they live."
[Unfortunately, as the Act now stands, the managers are not directly
elected by the parents of the children].

An anonymous writer in a recent issue of The Standard, signing himself
"Country Manager," writers: "We shall shortly be settling down under
the new Education Bill, with new authorities, new managers, and a new
syllabus. Could we not induce the framers of the new syllabus to
include an hour's technical instruction every day in country schools?
In the play-ground or close at hand, a shop or convenient shed might be
erected, where the boys might learn a little practical carpentering,
shoe-mending, plumbing or tailoring . . . That a country lad should know
all the rivers in Austria may, in some latent manner, be useful to him;
but that he should know how to mend a chair, patch a shoe, glaze a
window, and mend a garment, would seem to be of far greater service to
him in after life."

The Duke of Devonshire, in a recent speech, said: "It was constantly
said that the farmers were no friends of education. Well, if there was
any truth in that statement, he for one had never wondered at it . . . They
had seen it mainly from this point of view, that it had taken the best
and brightest boys and girls from the country districts away to
employment in the towns, and that it had done nothing to improve the
character of the labour which was still left to them in the country.
The education which the children received in our villages and rural
districts might have been such as to fit the children for occupations
in towns and large populous centres in various branches of industry,
but it had not been such as to make a boy or girl a better member of
the agricultural community. It was worth while, at this crisis, for
every one of us to consider what were the objects we really hoped to
gain by education . . . What we wanted was to form the character of the
children; to make them honest, industrious, more reflecting and
steadfast, and, next, to improve their intelligence so that they might be
more capable of doing whatever class of work might fall to their lot in
life, in a better and more conscientious manner."

Surely in rural districts a system of half-day school instruction might
be arranged whereby a child should have the opportunity of learning
out-door and home work, as well as mere book knowledge, or to insure
such instruction being given; to arrange half-day work being devoted—in
the case of the girls—to domestic training in the schools. In healthy
country districts, let the incarceration for infants be limited to half
a day; however light and well chosen the occupation, nature and pure
open air will be the better masters. If the mothers tell how the
children cry when kept from school, let adults in their turn weep over
the modern child who has ceased to make daisy-chains and cowslip-balls,
to search for fairies, or to wonder what the stars are!

"The great difficulty is, that we have not yet learned the relative
meaning of ignorance and knowledge. We do no teach the right things,
and we do not get the best results. We get bits of information and
progressive series of bits. We have flooded the child's mind, not
developed it."

These words were written by an American in 1888 with regard to the
American system, but they may be applied with equal aptness to English
schools in the present year. He further states:—"Train our teachers
well, but allow them to work out results. It is not information that we
should ask of school children so much as it is character and mental
life . . . To make education amusing, an easy road without toil, is to train
up a race of men and women who will shun what is displeasing to them."

In Section 9 it is stated that "the Board of Education . . . shall have
regard to the interest of secular instruction, to the wishes of parents
as to the education of their children, and to the economy of the rates."

Here are three distinct statements not lightly to be passed over by
those in authority. (1) "The interest of secular instruction." (2) "The
wishes of the parents" (hitherto entirely disregarded). (3) "The
economy of the rates" (a question disregarded with equal callousness).
The interest of secular education is undoubtedly the interest of the
locality in question, and in all probability will be found to coincide
with the wishes of the parents in their respective districts, whilst
the economy of the rates has become a matter of moment to the public at
large in these days of reduced incomes, industrial and agricultural
depression, and heavy Income-tax.

The wisdom of the above Section (9) if not nullified, is at any rate
considerably qualified, by the suggestions contained in Part IV.,
Section 23. (1) Where it is stated that:—"The power of a Council under
this Act shall include the provision of vehicles or the payment of
reasonable travelling expenses for teachers or children attending
school or college whenever the Council shall consider such provision or
payment required by the circumstances of their area or of any part
thereof"; and in Clause (2) where it is directed that:—"The power of a
Council . . . shall include power to make provision for the purpose outside
their area, and shall include power to provide or assist in providing
scholarships for, and to pay or assist in paying the fees of, students
ordinarily resident in the area of the Council at schools or colleges
or hostels within or without that area."

Little scope is here left for individual enterprise! No fear need
henceforth be entertained for future village Hampdens, or mute
inglorious Miltons! And yet . . . may there be no fear for the future
character of a people that is to gain its knowledge by means of a drain
upon the classes that are not to benefit by the result? Was it not
strenuous effort against obstacles and difficulties that made our
ancestors what they were? No amount of peptonised book-education will
compensate for an emasculated manhood, an effeminated womanhood. It
were well for 'the educational authority' to keep in mind the words of
Sir William Hamilton that "all true education is growth, and what we
grow to be concerns us more than what we live to know."